So the other day, I run into this guy in a weird uniform. He tells me he found an abandoned milk truck with a body inside, so he took the clothes, and now he's masquerading as The Milk Man, and trying to unite the disparate peoples of the post-apocalypse by reminding them of the milk service America used to provide. Obviously, I killed him and took his milk. What an asshole, right?

Eve and Evil

Jude K.:

Sir - My apologies for raising something which surely has
been addressed before, however perhaps it is worthwhile to revisit.
What's the deal with there not being any prominent supervillainesses?
Aside from the difficulty of spelling supervillainess I mean. I can think
of a couple villains from DC, Catwoman and Poison Ivy. I'm not a major
comic book guy but I'd say I'm a fair bit ahead of the norm and those are all I
can think of off the top of my head. Neither are remotely the same league
as a Lex Luthor or Doctor Doom. Marvel is if anything even worse! I
seem to vaguely remember an X-men foe called the White Queen. While there
aren't a ton of female superheroes there are at least a few, and Wonder Woman
is commendably high profile. I have no clue who her equivalent of the
Joker would be.
Hang in there!

First, Wonder Woman's arch-nemesis is the Cheetah. The crazy
cat-lady. She's technically imbued with the power of the Goddess of the Hunt,
which ostensibly means she's an actual threat to Wonder Woman, but in reality
she's just a furry with a bad attitude, and while she's been a frequent
antagonist for WW, she's not a particularly formidable one. Certainly not in
the Lex Luthor/Joker/Doctor Doom league.

As you've pointed out, this is indicative of a larger
problem in American comics, which seemingly can't handle major female villains.
Hell, once a villainess gets too popular, they soften her image and even
occasionally turn her into an anti-hero, which is what happened to Poison Ivy,
Catwoman, Harley Quinn, and Emma "White Queen" Frost. Meanwhile, the other
villainesses are minor threats, unless they team up with other, invariably male
villains like the Legion of Doom or Masters of Evil.

I think the basic problem is that most superheroes are men,
and their powers are primarily based around action. And the comics industry
finds it (understandably) problematic for big, muscled men to punch women in
the face, even if those women are about to kill a bank full of hostages, say.
Regardless of superhero gender equality, it just looks bad, and it's no wonder
they avoid it, by either having villainesses face off solely against heroines
(because women punching women is totes okay) or by having villainess who do
tangle with male heroes do so not with physical harm, but through "womanly
wiles" like mind control, seduction, and mind-controlled seduction (looking at
you, Poison Ivy and Enchantress). Then a matter of the hero defeating the
villainess is simply a matter of breaking the spell or seeing through the
deceit, and no one has to beat up girls.

The end result of all of this is there a few supervillainess
out there that rank among the great supervillains. And that's a shame.

Expanding Your Mind

Ben Z.:

Postman:

I came of age in the 90's and latched onto everything Star
Wars after the Special Editions came out. I read most of the Expanded Universe
books and comics up to the early 2000's, when I became disenchanted with the
saga after watching the prequels. I developed a real fondness for the
post-Return of the Jedi books written by Timothy Zahn, Michael Stackpole, and
Aaron Allston. I haven't re-read them since, but I started to like those books
as much as the classic films. Ever since they announced Episode 7, I have been
simultaneously grieving the death of post-Jedi Expanded Universe continuity and
excited that Disney is trying something new.

Lately I have been listening to the Star Wars
Minute podcast hosted by two guys who grew up with the original movies and bash
the Expanded Universe as much as they bash the prequels. When I go on Episode 7
news sites, I see a lot of comments written by prequel fans who also like to
bash the post-Jedi Expanded Universe. I feel sandwiched in between two groups
of haters. My question is: Were the Star Wars books in the 90's actually any
good or am I experiencing delusions of grandeur?

Some of them were, to be honest, quite godawful. I remember
The Courtship of Princess Leia in particular being so awful that I gave up on
Star Wars novels entirely, and this is when I was still reading Dungeons &
Dragons Forgotten Realms novels, so you know it must have been dire. To be
honest, while I liked Timothy Zahn's Thrawn trilogy, the novels that kicked the
expanded universe off, I hardly think they were perfect, what with their
"Luke" clones and animals that projected Force bubbles.

Since I quit pretty early, I can't tell you if all the Expanded
Universe novels are crap, although odds are they aren't. I don't think the Zahn
novels are crap, I just don't need them to be the basis of the new trilogy. But
if you enjoy them, that's what matters. Even if they are crap and I could give
you detailed evidence as to why they're problematic, who cares? I love a lot of
crap. It's not a crime.

I will tell you this, though: A few years ago, I picked up
one of my favorite Forgotten Realms books — R.A. Salvatore's The Crystal Shard
— and tried to re-read it for nostalgic kicks. It was so terrible I had to tear
my eyes out and throw them into a fire. Just keep that in mind, okay?

Her and Herc

Brian:

Dear postman,

Do you
think Marvel's Hercules would get along with Wonder Woman?

Hell yes. Another person of ancient Greek decent? Another
powerful warrior? Another child of Zeus? Of course he'd get along with Wonder
Woman, by which I mean he'd try to get into her star-spangled underwear. Now,
would Wonder Woman get along with Marvel's Hercules? Probably not so much.

Toying with our Emotions

Utsav:

Hey Rob,

My question is about the relationship between
studios, franchises and merchandising. Why does merchandising affect the fate
of a franchise so strongly? Take Tron, Young Justice, Tower Prep or any other
such show/movie, their fates had been sealed the moment the producers realized
that they were not selling enough toys! How much of revenue do toys bring in,
and should this culture be done away with? I mean Batman & Robin and the
whole Transformers franchise are just shameless multi-million dollar Toy
commercials, I can be fine with that, but if studios start basing their entire
revenue models on the success or failure of toy lines, then something is terribly
wrong!

Well,
first of all let me assure you something is terribly wrong, although this is a
problem that primarily affects animation. Again, major movies are so big that
they don't give a shit what happens to anyone else; remember how Paramount
delayed G.I. Joe 2 at the last minute, thus effectively destroying Hasbro's toy
sales? Hollywood enjoys merchandising profits, but they aren't beholden to it
in any way.

Animation,
on the other hand, is another story. Because of the glory days in the '80s when
every cartoon was accompanied by a zillion dollars in toy revenues — e.g.
He-Man, Transformers, G.I. Joe — companies make these cartoons with unrealistic
and completely invalid expectations that Teen Titans, Young Justice, Tron:
Uprising and the like should also sell a zillion dollars worth of toys, when
that's no longer how the toy market or animation industry work. Which is why
you can have perfectly good, popular shows —again, Teen Titans, Young Justice,
Tron: Uprising and the like — that have fine ratings, but get canceled so the
network can try another show that could sell a shit-ton of toys but never will.

What's Up, Doc

David H.:

Do we really have to have Peter Parker
back? Octavius is superior.

As I told everybody who freaked out when Peter Parker "died"
and Doc Ock took over Peter's body, "Don't worry. It's a comic book. He'll be
back eventually."

Sign for the Package

Robert M.:

Hello Mr. Postman,

Given your demonstrated expertise in fictional
character genitalia, I thought you'd be the appropriate resource to answer
this: What in the hell do you think is the deal with Baron Ashura's
genitals?

If we go by the last Mazinger animation out
there (spoilers ahead), Dr. Hell decided that taking two tragic lover's bodies
in suspended animation, rotting half of each via alien waste, then stitching
the remains together to create a half-man, half-woman hybrid was a better
method of mind control than, say, hypnosis, brainwashing or lobotomy.
But, practical decisions aside, how would such a madman resolve the genitalia
part?

I think it would be impossible to stitch half a
penis to half a vagina, but I somehow think Dr. Hell would not simply preserve
both sets as individual systems for each side. I can't decide if he'd go
for full mutilation, or by frankensteining something like a, I don't know, a
pegina? A vagenis? What do you think?

It's a vagina with a retractable penis inside it, which extends exactly like
the tiny mouth inside an Alien's mouth. Don't ask me how I know.

Do you have questions about anything scifi, fantasy, superhero, or nerd-related? Email the postman@io9.com! No question too difficult, no question too dumb! Obviously!